Preface

The question whether a Leblanc is still possible, the question
whether it is still possible to bring about an outbreak of
creative sanity in mankind, to avert this steady glide to
destruction, is now one of the most urgent in the world. It is
clear that the writer is temperamentally disposed to hope that
there is such a possibility. But he has to confess that he sees
few signs of any such breadth of understanding and steadfastness
of will as an effectual effort to turn the rush of human affairs
demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old institutions carries
us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is there any
plain recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as something
overriding any national and patriotic consideration, and that is
in the working class movement throughout the world. And labour
internationalism is closely bound up with conceptions of a
profound social revolution. If world peace is to be attained
through labour internationalism, it will have to be attained at
the price of the completest social and economic reconstruction
and by passing through a phase of revolution that will certainly
be violent, that may be very bloody, which may be prolonged
through a long period, and may in the end fail to achieve
anything but social destruction. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that it is in the labour class, and the labour class alone, that
any conception of a world rule and a world peace has so far
appeared. The dream of The World Set Free, a dream of highly
educated and highly favoured leading and ruling men, voluntarily
setting themselves to the task of reshaping the world, has thus
far remained a dream.

H. G. WELLS.

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